Elwin Hermanson

[Agriculture, June 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the minister knows he can attribute that to higher commodity prices and if the prices drop he will fall far below his targets. The minister is not a farmer and with the way he sucks and blows at the same time it is good he is not a veterinarian either.

Let us try another tact. The United States has launched a NAFTA challenge against Canadian tariffs on supply managed goods. Hopefully we will win this dispute, but in the long term and in the interest of reaching his goal the roadblock must be removed in order for dairy and poultry industries to gain access to the U.S. market. He can be certain the-

[Agriculture, June 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, that was a swing and miss. We will miss our target by at least $2 billion or $3 billion with that type of answer.

Let us try another tact. The minister of agriculture has failed to establish a whole farm NISA arrangement with all the provinces-another failure. The agriculture sector is becoming more vulnerable to the interprovincial trade barriers we have seen in the past. Ontario veal producers are being hurt by provincial companies in Quebec. Alberta's farm income stabilization plan has Saskatchewan cattle feeders worried. The list is getting longer and longer.

Will the Liberal government exercise its rightful role, a federal role, to prevent or remove interprovincial trade barriers on agriculture goods so the industry can flourish and actually meet the minister's targets for export rather than scrapping internally between the provinces?

[Agriculture, June 5th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the minister of agriculture has set a lofty goal for Canada of exporting $23 billion worth of agri-food products by the year 2000. The number would be up from $17.3 billion in the current year.

Meanwhile the minister continues to build and reinforce roadblocks that prevent Canadian farmers from developing new export markets to help reach his goals.

Let me give an example. The Canadian Wheat Board has stooped to biting and scratching in its attempt to protect its monopoly while bungling barley sales for the last two years and going on a witch hunt if farmers dare to challenge the board's right to be the sole marketing authority of their grain.

Will the minister make changes now, not some future vague time, that will allow farmers to develop new export opportunities for their wheat and barley outside the Canadian Wheat Board if they so choose?

[The Constitution, June 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I appreciate hearing that explanation from the member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce.

The government House leader assured this Parliament shortly after the election that this government would use time allocation and closure far less frequently than the previous Mulroney administration did.

However, the government has used time allocation and closure more than the Mulroney government. Maybe the hon. member for Notre-Dame-de-Grâce is not the culprit, but members will support it when it suits them and when it does not suit them they will support it. That is wrong.

Why does the member not suggest that the government-

[Questions On The Order Paper, June 3rd, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, it is with frustration that I speak to this point of order. I have had a question on the Order Paper since February 28, Question No. 9. Prior to that it was on the Order Paper from September 1994 until the House prorogued.

If this question is not answered in June, it will have been on the Order Paper for two years without being answered. I brought forward several times in the House and I have been assured it would be answered imminently, even from the past parliamentary secretary to the government House leader.

It is come to the point where I wonder if my privileges are being breached and I may have to raise the matter in another form if the question is not answered forthwith.

[Supply, May 30th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I listened with interest to the negative comments of the hon. member for Glengarry-Prescott-Russell. He quoted a lot. He quoted some Reform statements which I would support. However, most of what he quoted was totally out of context, including the dissenting report on the GST. He said that Reform supported harmonizing the GST.

Harmonization by its very nature means that the provinces and the federal government must be in agreement. We do not have harmonization. The Liberals have not kept their promise of harmonizing the GST. Only three provinces have agreed to harmonize the GST at the expense of taxpayers in the other provinces. They have even refused to compensate the province of Quebec, which had previously harmonized the GST federally with its provincial sales tax.

The member is totally out to lunch. He is not making any sense at all. The harmonization which he talked about will raise taxes.

The hon. member quoted Reform members. I have a letter written by the government whip regarding the GST. The letter was in response to a constituent from Ontario and was dated March 1, 1995. I do not think the hon. member wants to hear his own words, but he is going to hear them anyway.

He wrote one paragraph on the GST: "Lastly, concerning the GST, our government did promise to do away with it". Those are the words of the government whip. This is a member who has some credibility in the House because of his position. The government whip said: "Our government did promise to do away with it". Not to harmonize it, but to do away with it. It is written on this piece of paper. The letter continues: "However, we still have four years left in our current mandate to fulfil this promise and, like the others, it will be kept". Like the others it is being broken.

The Liberals are not talking about doing away with the GST. The hon. member himself will admit they are not talking about doing away with the GST. They are now talking about harmonizing it. They are not really harmonizing it because there is no harmony between the federal government and the provinces. It is a bunch of balderdash from the member.

He quoted Reformers out of context. He should look at his own words and decide if he should resign. At least the former hon. member for Hamilton East kept her word. She resigned when she was unable to fulfil her promise to Canadians. Maybe the member did not promise to resign. Maybe he does not think it is important to resign when he fails to keep his word.

Here it is in black and white: "Our government did promise to do away with it". The hon. member is not fulfilling the promise he made in his own correspondence to a constituent, which is wrong. Would the hon. member consider resigning and going back to face his constituents? He did not even have the courage to face 700 of his own constituents on the gun control bill. He did not even have the courage to go to the meeting to talk to his constituents.

[Canadian Wheat Board, May 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I do not think that the minister of agriculture understands that all prairie farmers are getting less money than they should right now. Prairie grain farmers are paid two to three dollars less for their wheat than American farmers.

The minister might have avoided the problem if he had acted promptly to correct it. He continues to tell farmers to wait for the Western Grain Marketing Panel report. We have heard it hundreds of times. We are missing opportunities for these premium prices.

Will the minister of agriculture give his word in this House that he will act decisively to correct the problems in the marketing system rather than make cosmetic changes or delay decisions that will continue to hurt all prairie farmers, hurt the prairie economy and kill jobs on the prairies?

[Canadian Wheat Board, May 27th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, the Minister of Agriculture and Agri-Food has been dragging his feet on making substantial changes to the way western grain is marketed. Meanwhile, the recent threat to the status quo Canadian Wheat Board monopoly powers resulted in immediate and swift action by the minister within one hour.

The prairie economy is being cheated out of hundreds of millions of dollars by the minister's failure to reform western grain marketing.

Will the minister act immediately to require the Canadian Wheat Board's buy back prices be based on the projected final Canadian price rather than significantly higher U.S. prices, thereby allowing producers with legal export permits to realize the benefit of better prices when they find them?

[Questions On The Order Paper, May 10th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I tabled a question on February 28, 71 days ago. It is the same question that I had on the Order Paper since September 15 of last year. It was on the Order Paper when the House prorogued.

I was assured by the former parliamentary secretary to the government House leader that the government was diligently pursuing the answer and that an answer would be forthcoming last year.

I asked the current Parliamentary Secretary to the Government House Leader if progress was made and I would expect an answer soon. He promised to get back to me a couple of weeks ago and I have heard absolutely nothing. It has been well over half a year since the question was initially asked. It is not a hard question. It is information the department should have at its fingertips. I would really like to have an answer very soon.

[Point Of Order, May 9th, 1996]

Mr. Speaker, I would like to know whether the government whip is calling the vote tonight a free vote, and therefore whether you will be calling for the vote to be taken row by row.

As I understand it, under the standing orders a free vote such as a vote on Private Members' Business is taken row by row, whereas a government order and a non-free vote is taken party by party. That is what we would like clarified. We have received conflicting reports about whether it will be a free vote.